TCS Daily

What`s the Frequency, Congress?

Unmanned aircraft,
bombers, and bombs are not the only instruments of U.S. power occupying
the skies above Afghanistan - they`re just the visible ones. Equally
important are the space-based satellites that take pictures of the
battlefield, allow the aircraft to communicate with headquarters and
navigate the munitions precisely to their targets.

The practice of using space to support military operations in real time
has, since the Persian Gulf War, become so effective and successful
that it has compelled planners in the Pentagon to push space-based
capabilities beyond navigation, communication and reconnaissance of
stationary targets. Their next frontier is space-based tracking of
moving targets on the ground.

Unfortunately, Capitol Hill isn`t tuned into this frequency.

The Senate Appropriations Committee has, according to Defense Daily,
cut off at the knees a program to build a constellation of Space-Based
Radar (SBR) satellites that - impervious to air defenses, difficult
terrain, and great distances - would beam to warfighters a constant
image of targets moving on the ground. The committee`s myopic move
comes just a year after Congress cancelled a similar satellite program
called Discoverer II.

What`s the committee`s rationale? "The
program proposes to fund research activities that are duplicative of
ongoing efforts in other DoD agencies." Similar criticism plagued
Discoverer II.

But Congress`s attacks aren`t accurate. The
country`s upcoming constellation of spy satellites called the "Future
Imagery Architecture," won`t be able to track moving targets at all -
only stationary ones. And the Joint Surveillance Target Attack System,
or JSTARS, an airplane-mounted radar-detection system that maps moving
targets on the battlefield, can only see "100 miles past the forward
line of troops." It risks seeing even less far in future because of
improvements in enemy air defenses, former tactical-technology director
of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency David Whelan has said.

Meanwhile, the advantages of the proposed Space-Based Radar are that it would provide:

moving-target images in real time. The SBR could beam to
military personnel images of everything from Afghanistan-based
terrorists moving in trucks to Chinese mobile missile-launchers being
shifted from location to location. With a "sensor to shooter link," the
satellites would allow aircraft or other weapons platforms to take out
such targets.

images untrammeled by terrain, clouds, nightfall or distance.
The satellites promise to map the ground from high altitude and from
several angles at once, doing away with the sorts of terrain
obstructions that block the view of non-stealthy, lower-flying
surveillance platforms such as JSTARS. It would also map terrain in
three dimensions, allowing warfighters to pinpoint targets precisely.
In addition the SBR would see across much greater distances than these
other platforms.

imperviousness to air defenses. The SBR, safe in a space
orbit, could not be struck by enemy air defenses the way JSTARS
aircraft can be currently or the way even stealthy unmanned aerial
vehicles. UAVs might be if enemy forced developed counter-stealth
measures. The imperviousness isn`t critical in Afghanistan or other
countries with negligible air defenses. But in a conflict with an
adversary such as Iran or China, altitude helps.

What`s more,
the SBR could be deployed in a decade - a short period in
military-acquisition terms. For all these reasons, it was wrongheaded
of the Senate Appropriations Committee to cut in half funding for the
SBR. The $50-million budget request should be restored when the 2002
Defense Appropriations Bill goes to conference. (The program goal is to
build about 24 satellites at $160 million a pop.)

The exploitation of space for battlefield purposes is the vanguard of
the "revolution in military affairs," or RMA. Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld recognized this with his space commission report
shortly before coming into office. The American public recognizes this
every time it`s awed by the accuracy of precision munitions landing on
a convoy of Taliban Landcruisers.

It`s high time Congress rotated its receiving dish to this beam of insight as well.